Recently, a reader wrote to me saying:
I am currently midway through student teaching and am struggling with classroom management (surprise!). I am not really getting any feedback from my cooperating teacher, other than “use short, quick redirects” and “your emotions are too transparent to students”. I worked in business for 18 years prior to this experience and I’m just struggling with how to try and turn a tense situation around. I have read through the articles posted on this site and they have given me some good ideas to work with. Here is my question: What can you do to turn around a tense relationship with students who do not regard you as “the person in charge”? (I hear comments that because I am a student teacher, I am a “fake” teacher, what I do with students does not count, etc. ). Not surprisingly, I am really thinking that teaching might not be for me.
Basically, my advice was:
[H]ow do you calm tense relationships? I think the number one thing is to understand where the kids are coming from. In my situation, I teach middle school. So when my kids do something crazy, it’s usually because they are in middle school. It functions as an all-around excuse. But that, as well as these tips should help out quite a bit.
So I thought I would present an opportunity for my readers to jump in and help a soon-to-be teacher. Pooling the combined amount of leadership and teaching experience of the 100+ readers of this blog, I’m sure we can come up with some great solutions!
